01/13/2025
And another year!!! 5 years no pain meds!
One challenge I feel all those that have beaten this addiction silently battle is the avoidance of most all health issues as a coping mechanism to prevent exposure. Exposure to an all too willing doctor, to the medically required during or post surgery's, many of us live in constant fear of what if, or when it must happen then what...
Seems no truer oxymoron, irony, conundrum whatever you call it than the fact that a person must stop taking these meds or end up an eventual statistic and headstone unable to be there for their family, and then eventually forced to be exposed to these same meds again to not end up in the same place unable to be there for their family from the health reasons ignored to insure one's sobriety.
So, when they seem to ignore the Dr's calls and messages until they feel mentally ready to deal with it, it's not they don't care about it, or can't handle it, it maybe they just care about their sobriety and you more than health.
And before those that have never physically experienced it chime in with "but you have a choice", yes, we do, and we chose to stay clean through commitment of avoidance for ourselves and loved ones, that choice makes the fear we live in that one day may have to make that choice again no less real, any less heavy to carry silently each day.
From someone that has kicked this habit in the past, it may not be the immediate severity of the health issue at hand weighing on them as much as the fears of impending potential battles while traveling that road past hell again that you cannot and hope never to understand.
Three Years Pain Med Free – A Lifetime to Go
I usually don’t get personal on here but feel this is something worth sharing if it helps or encourages someone else to get help and is the reason we opened Skyline Hydroponics.
Three years ago today, what at the moment felt like one of the darkest moments in life turned out to be a shining light leading out of the darkness I was already in for the previous four plus years.
Unfortunately, after multiple failed spinal fusions and nerve damage from a neck injury resulting in the all too familiar revolving door of doctors prescribing a never-ending cycle of pain & nerve meds like so many others today. I was left fighting the losing battle of a prescribed opioid addiction. On the surface I was a high functioning individual with a great career and life but was just repeatedly running the same gauntlet of daily addiction to get through the pain I was in each day. What was worse than any of the pain was that my family was having to survive that battle right alongside me unable to help.
After years of this battle my wife Kristina had understandably finally had enough. She had already plead with my doctor to taper me off these drugs multiple times to only have him switch to a different medication that never ended either. So, like the awesome kick ass woman, mother, and loving wife she is, she reached out to the doctor to inform him that she would be contacting the board of medicine to investigate the continued prescribing if I was not taken off these meds, and I can’t thank her enough, no matter my reaction at the time.
This led to the brutal but much needed cold turkey approach to discontinuing the daily use for nearly a year of heavy long and short acting opioid use on January 13th, 2020. Having come off these meds several times before between the ten different surgeries in the prior three and a half years I knew this was going to suck horribly and was absolutely scared as hell but inside I knew it’s what was needed. It took nearly two years to adjust and truly appreciate just how bad things had gotten and still trying to catch up on parts of a life lost to opioids and nerve meds.
Looking back, I can say that it wasn’t the pain that fueled the use of pain meds but the fear of living the rest of my life with the daily pain I knew I would be in. Once off these medications I was able to realize the pain was going to be there with or without these drugs and only replaced it with the pain they caused my family and self in other ways. After this realization, or acceptance I was finally able to embrace the pain and begin living and appreciating life again. I can say that with all the continued daily pain and random functionality from the erector set that is my spine, broken screws and all, I will never go back to treating my pain with those medications again.
Today I treat and manage my pain with my own medicine that I grow in a way that helps consistently without the long term physical and mental impacts to both myself and more importantly family. This is the reason we opened Skyline Hydroponics, to help people grow their own medicine and hopefully help someone else out of the same situation.
Thank you again Kristina for being there and kicking me in the ass when I needed it most, I love you and can’t thank you enough.
